


Affirmation

by Daiako (Achrya)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Arguing, Breaking Up & Making Up, Denial of Feelings, Dysfunctional Relationships, Getting Together, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, On Hiatus, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Pining, Slow Burn, Volleyball Dorks in Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Daiako
Summary: Coming together as a team is no easy feat for any group, especially with personalities as big and varied as their own, but the Karasuno volleyball team is determined to try their best. The sudden onset of Heat Season makes an already hard task even more complicated. Can they make it work or are they doomed to keep going around in circles, making the same mistakes?





	Affirmation

**Author's Note:**

> Song for this Chapter: Bulletproof Weeks, Matt Nathanson (Tsukishima and Yamaguchi's theme) 
> 
> This is very much omegaverse as I've built it up in my head, and so will vary from the standard trope in various ways. The biggest one is heats/ruts and how they work. It'll all be covered more in depth in the story, but it isn't a mindless frenzy or anything like that. Just a period of extreme fertility and arousal, that a person can usually lessen with blockers. Sex is a part of the story but no one is having it any time soon or due to urges they can't control. People will be acting really moody (and not just the omegas) 
> 
> Omegas in this universe all possess the same genitals (both a penis and vagina) plus any number of secondary sexual characteristics and so gender identity is a bit more fluid. That said most end up female identifying, be it because that's how they feel or because of outside pressure, so male identifying omegas are a bit more rare. It's only recently that they've been permitted to choose the teams they play on and, even then, there are some expectations (omega only uniforms, separate shower rooms). These factors will come into play in various ways, and the rating will eventually go up, so if any of this is a 'No' please feel free to hit the back button now.

The Karasuno boys volleyball team was omega heavy by any standard but especially for a male team. Tsukishima was aware of it, had noted it the same way he made note of all the little things about the team as he got to know them, but he didn’t think much about it one way or another. He knew that most schools had only started letting omegas play on boys teams in the past few years and that most still prefered to play with girls, a natural consequence of most omegas being female identifying. 

He knew for a fact there were teams out there that still didn’t have any male omegas and that there were people who thought that was how things should stay. He knew there were a lot of people, what the news and his parents labeled as ‘staunch traditionalists’, who rejected the idea of male identifying omegas completely. Not his family, or Yamaguchi’s, but he knew that his parents hadn’t known any male identifying omegas when they were his age and they were still pretty rare among adults. 

None of that was his concern directly but it was something he was aware of, by virtue of being friends with Yamaguchi as long as he had. Yamaguchi had once mentioned, in an offhand way, that he was the first omega to be allowed on their previous team. It had stuck with Kei in a way that had made him strangely uneasy; if they were a little older it was likely Yamaguchi would have been forced to play with a girl’s team regardless of being a boy and if that had been the case would he have even played? Would Yamaguchi have given up on the sport before starting, found a different way to become his friend, or given up on that as well? 

It was hard to imagine that his life could have turned out different if they’d been born a year or two sooner or if their previous coach had been less willing to let Yamaguchi on the team.  

Kei didn’t like to dwell on it, though that had proven hard at times. People could be assholes when it came to Yamaguchi, and male identifying omegas in general. Another thing Tsukishima was aware of, saw play out in front of him in the form of snide remarks or giggles when someone thought the fact that the only omega spent most of his time on the bench was hilarious or proved that he didn’t belong there. 

He’s expected Karasuno to be a repeat of their last team so when he’d realized there were three other omegas he’d been surprised. Even more so when he’d realized one of them was the vice-captain and that the rest of the team willingly listened to and deferred to him. The second was a second year, who seemed tasked with keeping the other three in line, and the third...that had been the biggest shock. Who would have thought that the King of the Court, the tyrant Kageyama Tobio who was rumored to have been turned out by his own team, the volleyball genius was an omega? Something about that just didn’t fit with Kei’s word view, though why exactly that was he couldn’t say.

(The shock from finding out Kageyama was an omega had, at least, prepared him for Oikawa from Seijo, and also made him begin to suspect there was something about the Setter role that attracted a certain type of person.) 

With the addition of Azumane that brought the total up to five and with a team as small as theirs was that was a big chunk of the roster. With three betas and four alphas they were officially the only omega dominated team that Kei knew of on the high school level. Unexpected but not novel or groundbreaking; the first male omega on the volleyball team had graduated a year before and the basketball team had an omega ace who’d lead them to the perfector championship two years ago. Everything after that barely ranked on the impressive stuff scale. Nothing they did in the future was likely to stand out or mean anything to anyone aside from themselves. 

As unusual as their team was it didn’t mean anything, in the grand scheme of things so he’d accepted it for what it was and thought no more about it. It meant something to Yamaguchi to have a lot of omegas around and that was where Kei’s interest in things began and ended, is what he’d thought. 

If Tsukishima looked back on things objectively, and not through a haze of near constant practice induced exhaustion and team caused irritation or through his disinterest in all things regarding dynamics, packs, and all of that, he would have picked up on the signs of something happening sooner. Even if he not in the other omegas on the team then, at the very least, in Yamaguchi. He didn’t know the rest of the team that well, and wasn’t sure he wanted to (it seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to get to know them beyond what it took to play with them. They were teammates, not friends, and he didn’t need all the details of their lives and personalities) so missing the signs that something was happening with them couldn’t be held against him, in his opinion. 

He didn’t know Ennoshita didn’t generally lose his temper with Tanaka and Noya and that for him to to snap at them often was out of character. He wasn’t aware that it was strange for Sugawara to show up looking rundown and to run his way through no less than 3 coffee drinks before the halfway point of morning practice. Asahi had only been back on the team a few weeks so there was no way to know he was even jumpier than normal and that the distance he was keeping from, and furtive glances he was sending, Nishinoya were unusual. 

Kageyama he, maybe, paid more attention to than their upperclassman but he didn’t register any thing that he saw, slightly sloppier tosses, shorter temper and outbursts that would fade into strained silence and furrowed brows just as quickly as they’d started as anything special. Tsukishima thought it was a little weird but he thought Kageyama was weird and wouldn’t have been surprised if part of the reason the setters former team had rejected him was because he was a moody asshole. 

But Yamaguchi he knew, or had thought he knew. They had years of friendship behind them and before things went sideways he would have said there was nothing about Yamaguchi he didn’t know, nothing he wouldn’t notice. But, somehow, he was was oblivious to things shifting around him. Maybe it was just that it started slowly, with small things. Or that they were so  busy with practices and plans for their match against Nekoma that he didn’t think much of Yamaguchi not coming over to his place to study or hang out. Maybe that the team trying to get everyone working together was a constant thing (they were lucky they weren’t constantly running into each other when trying to receive the ball, in his opinion) and that thing wasn’t his style so he hung back with Yamaguchi and didn’t connect that his friend was functionally isolating himself from the rest of the team. Maybe he really was so tired at the end of the night that he slunk home and collapsed into bed and assumed Yamaguchi did the same so the dark smudges under his eyes and the way he slept through lunch seemed normal enough. 

Maybe it was blindness caused by familiarity. Yamaguchi was Yamaguchi. He didn’t change and he never did anything surprising or unpredictable. Yamaguchi was steady, consistent, and simple and always had been. Kei knew exactly what to expect with him.

Right up until he didn’t. 

In the end It didn’t really matter why he hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t like anyone else had been connecting the dots either or been ready for it, at least not to a point of helpfully mentioning ‘by the way, it looks like we’re going to have to deal with some synced up super heats so keep your head down because everyone might be about to lose it’. 

It would have been useful advice.  

He didn’t see the argument start. He was only distantly aware of Kageyama and Hinata racing into the club room after school, of the door slamming against the wall from their force of their arrival, of the everpresent sounds of their bickering. He had become good at tuning them out already, focus narrowed down to plucking at the knotted mess of his shoelaces and the low thrum of music coming from the headphones hanging around his neck, so the thump and Hinata’s frantic yelp as orange blurred in the corner of his eye was enough to make him lean slightly to the side to avoid a flailing arm but not make him look up. 

“D-don’t!” Hinata shouted. Tsukishima wiggled his finger deeper into the tangle of laces and sighed in irritation; how had they gotten this messed up? “Kageyama, Yamaguchi, you can’t fight!” 

What?

He whipped his head up and around, eyes widening when he realized that Yamaguchi had moved from his locker to the middle of the room and looked...well. Pissed. His face was splotchy red, his hands were balled into fists, and he was glaring up at Kageyama with his eyes narrowed and teeth bared. Kageyama was glaring back, drawn up to his full height to loom over Yamaguchi, twins spots of red blooming on his cheeks. 

The air in the small room was not just full of tension, suffocating thick now that Kei was aware of it, but the warring scents of Kageyama and Yamaguchi as well. Scents were something he barely noticed, everyone had one, puberty had made him more of them, but for the most back they were staticy background information, glossed over and forgotten about unless someone was projecting or in his face. Both of the omegas were projecting, Yamaguchi’s mild scent that never failed to make Kei think ‘green’ when he got a whiff of it, and Kageyama’s heavier spice scent clashing and turning into something sour. 

Yamaguchi took a step forward, arm raising. Tsukishima jumped out of his chair, knocking it over in his haste, and lunged for his friend. He got between them, and got a hand wrapped around Yamaguchi’s wrist, in time to stop the punch from flying. Yamaguchi’s eyes widened in surprise and behind him Kei heard Kageyama suck in a surprised breath. 

Hinata, jumping up and down anxiously, sighed. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Wha- nothing.” Yamaguchi muttered, eyes dropping. “Everything’s fine, Tsukki.” 

Kageyama grunted. “Isn’t this the part where you say ‘sorry Tsukki’ and hide behind him for the rest of the day?” 

Tsukishima blinked, torn between ‘wait, that was actually a decent comeback?’ and ‘What the hell is happening?’ but not getting to vocalize either because Yamaguchi was twisting away and leaning around him, snarling. 

Snarling! 

It was shocking enough that he almost lost his hold on Yamaguchi and, to keep him from darting around him (with quickness he hadn’t known the omega had) he all but tackled him, forcing him bodily back  a few steps. 

Had he fallen asleep and woken up in an alternate dimension? He’d seen a movie like that once, a cheesy sci-fi one in english with questionable subtitles, with a snickering Yamaguchi hogging the couch and popcorn while Tsukishima dryly mocked the plot. How had that movie ended-

“Is making people hate you the only other thing you’re good at?” Yamaguchi hissed. 

Tsukishima saw, from the corner of his eye, Kageyama flinch then scowl. “Better than being good at nothing but sitting on the bench.”

The way Yamaguchi’s eyes glittered, dark and furious, was a little concerning. Not as concerning as the cold, hard thing that took up residence in Tsukishima’s stomach and then cracked open, leaking icey calm through his body near instantly.  

“Well,” Tsukishima said slowly, masterfully ignoring all the warning bells going off in his head, Hinata’s panicked ‘Wait!’, and the sound of the clubroom door opening. “At least he’s never been benched after being rejected by his entire team for failing at the one thing they tolerated him for.”

“Tsukishima!” Sawamura’s voice was a crack of thunder. Behind him, just outside the doorway, Sugawara and Tanaka were exchanging unreadable looks. Yamaguchi deflated, head bowing and face turning away, hidden from even Kei as his hair fell forward over his face.

Everything stopped and Kei was willing to swear that they all held their breath together, waiting as the captain’s eyes swept over them. Finally he jerked his head in silent command. “Tsukishima, outside. Now.” 

There wasn’t anything to do but step back and follow. He tossed one last look at Kageyama and nearly stumbled over his feet at the sight of the setter, shoulders hunched forward, mouth twisted into a grimace, eyes glistening wetly. 

Was he about to cry? 

Had he made  **Kageyama** cry?! 

...why did he feel like he was the asshole? 

“Explain.” Sawamura got right to the point once the door was shut behind them. Tsukishima crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the railing, lips pressing together in a thin line. It wasn’t exactly a refusal, how he could explain what he didn’t know anything about, but a part of him chafed at being ordered around, even by an older alpha. 

It was…harder sometimes, now that he was older and had gone through his first rut, to deal with the two pulls he felt when it came to being on a team. Part of him wanted to be part of the group, to accept them as his pack, and that part was strong and loud and never shut up. But there was also a part, the smarter part, that wanted nothing to do with that. Getting too close, making the team like family, was part of where Akiteru had gone wrong. It opened a person up too much, left them bare when they let bonds form with others.

It wasn’t a mistake he planned to make. 

So he leaned heavily on the instinct to not show his neck or defer to what his stupid lizard brain said was the Pack Leader. He kept himself apart, did just enough to get by, tried to keep a firm grasp on everything going on around him, and steadfastly rejected any inclination to let the team be more than it was.

“Tsukishima.”

He looked at his feet and tried not to feel too much like a child being scolded. 

“Okay.” Sawamura said, perfectly pleasant even as the air around him grew heavy and the shadows around them seemed to length and close in around them. He even smiled, small and understanding, and more terrifying that anything Kei had ever directed at him in all his life. Tsukishima shuffled back, pressing more fully against the railing, bracing himself for something. What he wasn’t sure but he could sense Sawamura was working himself up to something and that he wasn’t going to like it. 

He didn’t like it. By the time he was allowed to slink back into the club room, now packed with the rest of the team and an air of confused tension that had a presence all it’s own,  he’d been told, in no uncertain terms, to apologize and at least attempt to look his meant it or else spend the rest of his first year volleyball career doing flying receives and sprints until he puked, every single practice. And then, after he puked, he would do hill runs and burpees and then-

Tsukishima wasn’t sure he would have taken it seriously from anyone else but there was something about Sawamura that made it impossible to question that he would make him regret the day he’d been born, and ever single choice he’d made since to land him in this time and place, if he didn’t do as he was told.

That was probably what seperated alphas like Sawamura, natural leaders who people fell in  line for without challenge, from the rest of them. 

“Sorry Kageyama.” He said, face carefully neutral and tone bland. Someone (Noya) started to snicker but a twitch of Sawamura’s head and it quickly became weak coughing that faded as quickly, and uncomfortably, as it had started. He felt more like a pup than ever, forced to make nice lest he get in even more trouble than he already was.  

Hinata made an unhappy squawking noise and looked about two seconds from physically exploding but somehow managed to refrain from saying whatever was on his mind. Sawamura putting a hand on his shoulder probably had something to do with his newfound ability to keep his mouth shut.  

Kageyama, standing in one of the far corners with a solemn Sugawara at his side, nodded once, tightly. Suga clapped him on the shoulder what looked to be much harder than it had to be, hard enough for Kageyama to stumble forward a step, someone (Tanaka) snickered without getting a scolding look, and the tension in the room cracked. 

Kei returned to his locked, and his still tangled shoes, and listened with half an ear as Sawamura reminded them all that they were a team and that learning to trust and work together would take time, but to remember they all had a common goal and picking at each other wasn’t going to help anything. He could feel eyes on him but resolutely refused to look up or acknowledge that he was the reason everyone was getting a ‘Be nice to each other’ lecture from their captain. He was embarrassed enough for one day. 

Everyone else filed out once the speech was over, though not without Tanaka slapping him between the shoulders and all but shouting ‘Nice going’ right in his ear, leaving only himself and Yamaguchi. Who shuffled his feet, a sign sign of discomfort, before speaking. 

“You shouldn’t have done that!” The words came bursting out of the other, urgent, shaking, and tinged with anger. Tsukishima turned his head to stare at Yamaguchi, eyes widening. “I can take care of myself! I-I don’t need you to rescue me from everything!”

He was struck silent and even if he had been able to think of a response for  **that** or having Yamaguchi’s anger turned on him he wouldn’t have had a chance to express it because his friend turned on his his heel and stormed out of the room. 

Tsukishima looked down at his feet, lips pressing into a thin line, and once again considered his alternate reality theory. 

\---

Daichi’s left eye sometimes twitched when he was frustrated; the more frustrated he was the more likely it was to twitch. Koushi was not at all surprised that, when Tsukishima finally shuffled into the gym with a pensive expression on his face and, after taking a look around, opted to take a seat on the opposite end of the court from Yamaguchi and start warming up, Daichi’s eye was twitching erratically. 

Things had already been strained with the first years but Tsukishima yelling at Kageyama, and Hinata insisting that Yamaguchi had actually started the argument, had been unexpected. Growing pains and personality clashes happened everywhere but something in the air felt different this time around and Koushi knew they all felt it, though they couldn’t put a name to what it was yet.

He shot a look at Asahi, who nodded to show he was seeing it as well. The year before had seen a lot of eye twitching in regards to what they’d thought would be the most rowdy first years anyone had ever dealt with, especially when most of them had dropped out and left only Tanaka and Noya behind. He and Asahi had been pretty sure Daichi was going to lose it multiple times during what they now called the ‘Great Ukai Walk Out’; they could laugh about it now but at the time the stress for Daichi, as future captain, had been overwhelming. For a time it had looked like they might not even have enough players for make a team when their upperclassmen retired and a lot of that pressure had fallen on Daichi. 

It had worked out when Ennoshita, Narita, and Kinoshita had returned but things had been tense until then. 

They were tense again but in a different way now. They had numbers and more than a few impressive players in their first years, a reality Suga was very aware of, Asahi and Noya were back, and things were looking good. 

If they overlooked the personality issues. Kageyama and Hinata were amazing but spent a good 75% of the time yelling at each other, Tsukishima was a jerk to even the second years (and the third years sometimes, under his breath), and Suga still hadn’t gotten a read on Yamaguchi. They were far from being a team that could work together well, let alone as smoothly as a team like Seijo did, and that was going to be a problem. They all knew it but something easy to state and pin down didn’t always make for something easy to figure out. 

“Maybe we could lock them in a room until they get along.” Asahi suggested lightly. Daichi stared at him, expression almost painfully mild, and Asahi shrank away, hands up as if to defend himself. “It’s a joke! Just a-Daichi. Daichi you can’t do that.” 

“Can’t I?” Daichi asked, an odd lilt to his voice. “And not just them. You and Nishinoya too.”

Asahi blanched. “What? Why would you- Nishinoya and I are fine! Everything is sorted and we’re working and- it’s. Fine. Just like it was before.” 

Suga spared a second to search out Noya, not at all surprised to find the lone second year alpha in the middle of a shoving match with Tanka while a deeply unimpressed Kiyoko looked on and an even more unimpressed Ennoshita stomped towards them, then looked up at Asahi. “Not very convincing Azumane.” He poked the bigger omega in the ribs, laughing at the Asahi’s whine as he danced away from him with all the grace of a newborn horse. 

Daichi’s eye twitched; he pressed two fingers at the corner, just below his eyebrow, in what Koushi knew was a futile attempt to control it. “As long as you-”

“Keep it from affecting the team.” Asahi said in an imitation of Daichi that was so close to the real thing Suga couldn’t help but laugh at it, and at how Asahi stepped further away, shoulders hunching, under the force of Daichi’s glare. “There’s nothing going on so don’t lock me in any rooms. You know I get nervous in enclosed spaces.” 

“Everything makes you nervous.” 

“Untrue and not the point.” Asahi paused, eyes darting around. “Just. A lot of things make me nervous and only when I really think about them and just. No locked rooms. Please.” 

Koushi bit down on the inside of his cheek. There wasn’t any point in saying what he was thinking, which was that things weren’t like they were before, not exactly. He supposed they weren’t talking about it, or the looks Noya sometimes tossed Asahi’s way, half uncertain and half furious, or how Asahi pointedly avoided looking at Noya at all where once he’d seemed unable to keep his eyes from drifting that way. A few months ago Asahi had talked about Noya like the younger teen had personally hung the moon in the sky but now he cringed whenever he was mentioned. 

It didn’t seem to be messing up their practices or anything, they both stepped onto the court and worked together fine but, at the same time,  _ fine _ wasn’t enough. Things had seemed promising after the match against the Neighborhood Association but not so much in the weeks after. Suga had been hoping if they just left it alone things would eventually smooth themselves out. 

Daichi clearly wanted to take a more direct route but he’d been pretty against the ‘thing’ between Noya and Asahi from the start. ‘Mixing business with pleasure’ was how Daichi had put it, thus proving to all the world that he really was an old man trapped in a teenagers body just as Koushi had always suspect, and he had unilaterally forbidden them from it.

Which was something to dwell on another day. Suga was was getting to be very good at dwelling on Daichi related things, especially lately. Too much, if Suga was being honest with himself. A crush was one thing, and he hesitated to call it a crush when it was more of a healthy and reasonable appreciation for Daichi as a person and leader who also happened to be attractive and thoughtful and kind and wore the absolutely worst old man sweaters Suga had ever seen outside of school, which should have been a turn off but wasn’t and had made it painfully clear there was no chance there. 

Hormones raging out of control, maybe, and Koushi’s traitor omega brain fixating on the closest alpha around but not a crush. And certainly not something that should have been keeping him up at night like it had for the past...for way too long. 

It was stupid, at best, and borderline creepy at worst, to lose sleep because thinking about one of his best friends made him too turned on to get any rest. He needed to cut it out, not let it start creeping into normal waking hours. 

Ukai’s whistle, and a shout of “Alright, start running! We’re working on conditioning today so don’t slack on the warm up!” got them moving, joining the team at the back of the pack as they started laps around the gym. 

“You still need to figure out what to do with your children.” Koushi said, pitching his voice so no one else would overhear. 

Daichi made a face. “My children?  **Our** children, if anything.”

Suga didn’t choke on his tongue or trip over his feet but it was a near thing and his sudden coughing fit drew a concerned look from Daichi. Suga waved him off in favor of dropping back a little further to run beside Asahi, where his only issue was that self-pity might be contagious. 

**Author's Note:**

> Next Chapter: The lack of harmony continues and Takeda and Ukai get closer to figuring out the cause.


End file.
